Katherine Anne Porter (35 page)

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Helton. “I take it.”

“Well, now I guess we’ll call it a deal, hey?” Mr. Thompson jumped up as if he had remembered important business. “Now, you just take hold of that churn and give it a few swings, will you, while I ride to town on a coupla little errands. I ain’t been able to leave the place all week. I guess you know what to do with butter after you get it, don’t you?”

“I know,” said Mr. Helton without turning his head. “I know butter business.” He had a strange drawling voice, and even when he spoke only two words his voice waved slowly up and down and the emphasis was in the wrong place. Mr. Thompson wondered what kind of foreigner Mr. Helton could be.

“Now just where did you say you worked last?” he asked, as if he expected Mr. Helton to contradict himself.

“North Dakota,” said Mr. Helton.

“Well, one place is good as another once you get used to it,” said Mr. Thompson, amply. “You’re a forriner, ain’t you?”

“I’m a Swede,” said Mr. Helton, beginning to swing the churn.

Mr. Thompson let forth a booming laugh, as if this was the best joke on somebody he’d ever heard. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said at the top of his voice. “A Swede: well, now, I’m afraid you’ll get pretty lonesome around here. I never seen any Swedes in this neck of the woods.”

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Helton. He went on swinging the churn as if he had been working on the place for years.

“In fact, I might as well tell you, you’re practically the first Swede I ever laid eyes on.”

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Helton.

Mr. Thompson went into the front room where Mrs. Thompson was lying down, with the green shades drawn. She had a bowl of water by her on the table and a wet cloth over her eyes. She took the cloth off at the sound of Mr. Thompson’s boots and said, “What’s all the noise out there? Who is it?”

“Got a feller out there says he’s a Swede, Ellie,” said Mr. Thompson; “says he knows how to make butter.”

“I hope it turns out to be the truth,” said Mrs. Thompson. “Looks like my head never will get any better.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Mr. Thompson. “You fret too much. Now I’m gointa ride into town and get a little order of groceries.”

“Don’t you linger, now, Mr. Thompson,” said Mrs. Thompson. “Don’t go to the hotel.” She meant the saloon; the proprietor also had rooms for rent upstairs.

“Just a coupla little toddies,” said Mr. Thompson, laughing loudly, “never hurt anybody.”

“I never took a dram in my life,” said Mrs. Thompson, “and what’s more I never will.”

“I wasn’t talking about the womenfolks,” said Mr. Thompson.

The sound of the swinging churn rocked Mrs. Thompson first into a gentle doze, then a deep drowse from which she waked suddenly knowing that the swinging had stopped a good while ago. She sat up shading her weak eyes from the flat strips of late summer sunlight between the sill and the lowered shades. There she was, thank God, still alive, with supper to cook but no churning on hand, and her head still bewildered, but easy. Slowly she realized she had been hearing a new sound even in her sleep. Somebody was playing a tune on the harmonica, not merely shrilling up and down making a sickening noise, but really playing a pretty tune, merry and sad.

She went out through the kitchen, stepped off the porch, and stood facing the east, shading her eyes. When her vision cleared and settled, she saw a long, pale-haired man in blue jeans sitting in the doorway of the hired man’s shack, tilted back in a kitchen chair, blowing away at the harmonica with his eyes shut. Mrs. Thompson’s heart fluttered and sank. Heavens, he looked lazy and worthless, he did, now. First a lot of no-count fiddling darkies and then a no-count white man. It was just like Mr. Thompson to take on that kind. She did wish he would be more considerate, and take a little trouble with his business. She wanted to believe in her husband, and there were too many times when she couldn’t. She wanted to believe that tomorrow, or at least the day after, life, such a battle at best, was going to be better.

She walked past the shack without glancing aside, stepping carefully, bent at the waist because of the nagging pain in her
side, and went to the springhouse, trying to harden her mind to speak very plainly to that new hired man if he had not done his work.

The milk house was only another shack of weather-beaten boards nailed together hastily years before because they needed a milk house; it was meant to be temporary, and it was; already shapeless, leaning this way and that over a perpetual cool trickle of water that fell from a little grot, almost choked with pallid ferns. No one else in the whole countryside had such a spring on his land. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson felt they had a fortune in that spring, if ever they get around to doing anything with it.

Rickety wooden shelves clung at hazard in the square around the small pool where the larger pails of milk and butter stood, fresh and sweet in the cold water. One hand supporting her flat, pained side, the other shading her eyes, Mrs. Thompson leaned over and peered into the pails. The cream had been skimmed and set aside, there was a rich roll of butter, the wooden molds and shallow pans had been scrubbed and scalded for the first time in who knows when, the barrel was full of buttermilk ready for the pigs and the weanling calves, the hard packed-dirt floor had been swept smooth. Mrs. Thompson straightened up again, smiling tenderly. She had been ready to scold him, a poor man who needed a job, who had just come there and who might not have been expected to do things properly at first. There was nothing she could do to make up for the injustice she had done him in her thoughts but to tell him how she appreciated his good clean work, finished already, in no time at all. She ventured near the door of the shack with her careful steps; Mr. Helton opened his eyes, stopped playing, and brought his chair down straight, but did not look at her, or get up. She was a little frail woman with long thick brown hair in a braid, a suffering patient mouth and diseased eyes which cried easily. She wove her fingers into an eyeshade, thumbs on temples, and, winking her tearful lids, said with a polite little manner, “Howdy do, sir. I’m Miz Thompson, and I wanted to tell you I think you did real well in the milk house. It’s always been a hard place to keep.”

He said, “That’s all right,” in a slow voice, without moving.

Mrs. Thompson waited a moment. “That’s a pretty tune
you’re playing. Most folks don’t seem to get much music out of a harmonica.”

Mr. Helton sat humped over, long legs sprawling, his spine in a bow, running his thumb over the square mouth-stops; except for his moving hand he might have been asleep. The harmonica was a big shiny new one, and Mrs. Thompson, her gaze wandering about, counted five others, all good and expensive, standing in a row on the shelf beside his cot. “He must carry them around in his jumper pocket,” she thought, and noted there was not a sign of any other possession lying about. “I see you’re mighty fond of music,” she said. “We used to have an old accordion, and Mr. Thompson could play it right smart, but the little boys broke it up.”

Mr. Helton stood up rather suddenly, the chair clattered under him, his knees straightened though his shoulders did not, and he looked at the floor as if he were listening carefully. “You know how little boys are,” said Mrs. Thompson. “You’d better set them harmonicas on a high shelf or they’ll be after them. They’re great hands for getting into things. I try to learn ’em, but it don’t do much good.”

Mr. Helton, in one wide gesture of his long arms, swept his harmonicas up against his chest, and from there transferred them in a row to the ledge where the roof joined to the wall. He pushed them back almost out of sight.

“That’ll do, maybe,” said Mrs. Thompson. “Now I wonder,” she said, turning and closing her eyes helplessly against the stronger western light, “I wonder what became of them little tads. I can’t keep up with them.” She had a way of speaking about her children as if they were rather troublesome nephews on a prolonged visit.

“Down by the creek,” said Mr. Helton, in his hollow voice. Mrs. Thompson, pausing confusedly, decided he had answered her question. He stood in silent patience, not exactly waiting for her to go, perhaps, but pretty plainly not waiting for anything else. Mrs. Thompson was perfectly accustomed to all kinds of men full of all kinds of cranky ways. The point was, to find out just how Mr. Helton’s crankiness was different from any other man’s, and then get used to it, and let him feel at home. Her father had been cranky, her brothers and uncles had all been set in their ways and none of them alike; and every
hired man she’d ever seen had quirks and crotchets of his own. Now here was Mr. Helton, who was a Swede, who wouldn’t talk, and who played the harmonica besides.

“They’ll be needing something to eat,” said Mrs. Thompson in a vague friendly way, “pretty soon. Now I wonder what I ought to be thinking about for supper? Now what do you like to eat, Mr. Helton? We always have plenty of good butter and milk and cream, that’s a blessing. Mr. Thompson says we ought to sell all of it, but I say my family comes first.” Her little face went all out of shape in a pained blind smile.

“I eat anything,” said Mr. Helton, his words wandering up and down.

He
can’t
talk, for one thing, thought Mrs. Thompson; it’s a shame to keep at him when he don’t know the language good. She took a slow step away from the shack, looking back over her shoulder. “We usually have cornbread except on Sundays,” she told him. “I suppose in your part of the country you don’t get much good cornbread.”

Not a word from Mr. Helton. She saw from her eye-corner that he had sat down again, looking at his harmonica, chair tilted. She hoped he would remember it was getting near milking time. As she moved away, he started playing again, the same tune.

Milking time came and went. Mrs. Thompson saw Mr. Helton going back and forth between the cow barn and the milk house. He swung along in an easy lope, shoulders bent, head hanging, the big buckets balancing like a pair of scales at the ends of his bony arms. Mr. Thompson rode in from town sitting straighter than usual, chin in, a towsack full of supplies swung behind the saddle. After a trip to the barn, he came into the kitchen full of good will, and gave Mrs. Thompson a hearty smack on the cheek after dusting her face off with his tough whiskers. He had been to the hotel, that was plain. “Took a look around the premises, Ellie,” he shouted. “That Swede sure is grinding out the labor. But he is the closest mouthed feller I ever met up with in all my days. Looks like he’s scared he’ll crack his jaw if he opens his front teeth.”

Mrs. Thompson was stirring up a big bowl of buttermilk cornbread. “You smell like a toper, Mr. Thompson,” she said
with perfect dignity. “I wish you’d get one of the little boys to bring me in an extra load of firewood. I’m thinking about baking a batch of cookies tomorrow.”

Mr. Thompson, all at once smelling the liquor on his own breath, sneaked out, justly rebuked, and brought in the firewood himself. Arthur and Herbert, grubby from thatched head to toes, from skin to shirt, came stamping in yelling for supper. “Go wash your faces and comb your hair,” said Mrs. Thompson, automatically. They retired to the porch. Each one put his hand under the pump and wet his forelock, combed it down with his fingers, and returned at once to the kitchen, where all the fair prospects of life were centered. Mrs. Thompson set an extra plate and commanded Arthur, the eldest, eight years old, to call Mr. Helton for supper.

Arthur, without moving from the spot, bawled like a bull calf, “Saaaaaay, Hellllllton, suuuuuupper’s ready!” and added in a lower voice, “You big Swede!”

“Listen to me,” said Mrs. Thompson, “that’s no way to act. Now you go out there and ask him decent, or I’ll get your daddy to give you a good licking.”

Mr. Helton loomed, long and gloomy, in the doorway. “Sit right there,” boomed Mr. Thompson, waving his arm. Mr. Helton swung his square shoes across the kitchen in two steps, slumped onto the bench and sat. Mr. Thompson occupied his chair at the head of the table, the two boys scrambled into place opposite Mr. Helton, and Mrs. Thompson sat at the end nearest the stove. Mrs. Thompson clasped her hands, bowed her head and said aloud hastily, “Lord, for all these and Thy other blessings we thank Thee in Jesus’ name, amen,” trying to finish before Herbert’s rusty little paw reached the nearest dish. Otherwise she would be duty-bound to send him way from the table, and growing children need their meals. Mr. Thompson and Arthur always waited, but Herbert, aged six, was too young to take training yet.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson tried to engage Mr. Helton in conversation, but it was a failure. They tried first the weather, and then the crops, and then the cows, but Mr. Helton simply did not reply. Mr. Thompson then told something funny he had seen in town. It was about some of the other old grangers at
the hotel, friends of his, giving beer to a goat, and the goat’s subsequent behavior. Mr. Helton did not seem to hear. Mrs. Thompson laughed dutifully, but she didn’t think it was very funny. She had heard it often before, though Mr. Thompson, each time he told it, pretended it had happened that self-same day. It must have happened years ago if it ever happened at all, and it had never been a story that Mrs. Thompson thought suitable for mixed company. The whole thing came of Mr. Thompson’s weakness for a dram too much now and then, though he voted for local option at every election. She passed the food to Mr. Helton, who took a helping of everything, but not much, not enough to keep him up to his full powers if he expected to go on working the way he had started.

At last, he took a fair-sized piece of cornbread, wiped his plate up as clean as if it had been licked by a hound dog, stuffed his mouth full, and, still chewing, slid off the bench and started for the door.

“Good night, Mr. Helton,” said Mrs. Thompson, and the other Thompsons took it up in a scattered chorus. “Good night, Mr. Helton!”

“Good night,” said Mr. Helton’s wavering voice grudgingly from the darkness.

“Gude not,” said Arthur, imitating Mr. Helton.

“Gude not,” said Herbert, the copy-cat.

“You don’t do it right,” said Arthur. “Now listen to me. Guuuuuude naht,” and he ran a hollow scale in a luxury of successful impersonation. Herbert almost went into a fit with joy.